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Indonesia on Sunday said suicide bombers carried out the blasts that killed at least 26 on the resort island of Bali, and that the attacks bore the hallmark of Islamic militants linked to al-Qaeda.
   The president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who visited the sites where bombs ripped apart two restaurants and a shopping area and wounded more than 100 holidaymakers Saturday, said Indonesia would have to do more to fight off such attacks.
   ‘The result of the investigation so far indicates that the bombings were carried out by suicide bombers,’ he said. ‘It is obvious that we need to take more effective action to anticipate suicide bombings.’
   The country’s top counter-terrorism official, Ansyaa Mbai, said earlier that the carnage looked to be the work of Jemaah Islamiyah, which wants to carve out a pan-Islamic state across Southeast Asia.
   Yudhoyono declined to name JI, saying: ‘At this time around I should not point out what groups are responsible for the incident ... but there are many possible motives of course.’
   But Mbai said he had seen what remained of the bodies of the suspected suicide bombers, and the attacks looked like the work of two Malaysian fugitives believed to have masterminded previous JI attacks.
   ‘Our suspicion is based on its similarity to the previous bombings in Kuta,’ Mbai said, referring to the Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people three years before and brought the island’s tourism industry to a virtual standstill.
   As grieving friends and relatives began to collect and bury the bodies of their loved ones, or desperately sought news about their fates, some here feared the bloodshed could this time end Bali’s economic lifeline for good.
   Hospital officials said 107 people were wounded, some gravely, by the almost simultaneous blasts at two beachfront seafood restaurants in Jimbaran and a third in a pedestrian neighbourhood in Kuta packed with shops and visitors.
   JI has been strongly linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, which professes to be fighting Western oppression of Muslims including in Iraq.
   While some tourists still sunned themselves on the golden beaches of Bali, a Hindu enclave in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, authorities said they were looking for suspects linked to the bombings.
   ‘Six behind bomb plot’
   At least six people conspired to carry out the latest Bali blasts including the three suspected suicide bombers, Bali police chief I Made Mangku Pastika said Sunday.
   ‘What is clear is they number more than three, at least there are three more people,’ he told a press conference.
   ‘I am certain that there are others involved in this bombing. There are those who planned it, there were those making the arrangements, those preparing the bombs and those are the ones we must search for.’
   Pastika said investigators believed the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers because of the way the suspects’ bodies had been torn apart, with fragments of their jackets clinging to their dismembered body parts.

World leaders condemned a wave of attacks by suspected suicide bombers on Bali that left at least 26 people dead, and pledged to support Indonesia in its fight against terrorism.
   The blasts tore through three packed tourist restaurants on the Indonesian resort island Saturday evening, creating all-too-familiar scenes of bloody chaos just days before the third anniversary of the nightclub attacks there.
   Officials said tourists from Britain, the United States, Australia, Japan and South Korea were among the dead and the scores of injured.
   Messages of condemnation and support flooded in from across the world, including Britain, the United States, France, Japan and Australia, which insisted it was not the target of the attacks, unlike in the 2002 blasts.
   ‘I think we should see this as primarily an attempt to wreak havoc and cause fear and create instability inside Indonesia,’ said the Australian prime minister John Howard.
   He said the attacks bore the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiyah, the al-Qaeda-linked Southeast Asian organisation that carried out the October 12, 2002 Bali blasts that killed 202 people.
   The UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, said he was dismayed that the island—a popular destination for Western holidaymakers—had once again become a target of indiscriminate violence.
   The British prime minister, Tony Blair, also denounced the ‘appalling attacks’.
   ‘We stand by Indonesia at this very difficult time,’ said Blair, who was writing a personal note to the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
   London’s Foreign Office said one Briton with dual Australian nationality had been seriously injured and another slightly hurt in the blasts.
   The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, echoed Blair’s words.
   ‘The United States condemns the terrorist bombings today in Bali that claimed innocent lives and injured many more,’ she said in a statement.
   ‘Japan also pledged to continue ‘its utmost efforts to tackle terrorism in cooperation with the international community, and to cooperate with and support the government of Indonesia in such efforts,’ the foreign ministry said.
   The Singaporean government said the attacks underlined the need for stronger regional cooperation against terrorism in Asia.
   The French president, Jacques Chirac, said in a letter to Yudhoyono that news of the near-simultaneous bombings ‘stunned and saddened me’.
   Germany’s foreign minister Joschka Fischer also denounced ‘in the strongest possible terms the despicable attacks in Bali’.
   A spokesman quoted him as saying: ‘The motive behind the attacks should be determined and those responsible brought to justice.’
   The Irish foreign minister, Dermot Ahern, added his voice to the chorus of disgust. ‘I utterly condemn this barbaric attack which was deliberately designed to kill and injure innocent people,’ he said in a statement.
   In Manila the president, Gloria Arroyo, condemned the bombings and ordered the stepping up of security at all tourist sites in the Philippines, which is also grappling with its own insurgency problems.
   Cambodia also condemned the deadly bombings and said it feared tourism across Southeast Asia would be affected by the attacks.

India’s foreign minister was due in Pakistan on Sunday for talks on the nuclear-armed neighbours’ tentative peace process with two agreements expected on security cooperation but no major breakthroughs seen as likely.
   Natwar Singh will meet his Pakistani counterpart, Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri, on Monday with pacts expected on advance warning of ballistic missile tests and on a hotline between their coast guards, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper said.
   ‘We shouldn’t expect major breakthroughs but definitely we’ll see some progress,’ said Jamshed Ayaz, president of the Institute of Regional Studies, an Islamabad-based think-tank.
   It will be Singh’s second visit to Pakistan since the neighbours launched their peace process early last year after they went to the brink of a fourth war in 2002.
   Singh’s visit follows a meeting between the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, and the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, in New York last month that ended without any major announcement or concrete initiatives, as many had expected.
   Even before that meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the neighbours exchanged barbs on their long-running dispute over the Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir.
   Both countries claim the region but it remains divided by a ceasefire line, the result of the two countries’ first war over the territory soon after independence from Britain in 1947.
   Tens of thousands have died in Indian Kashmir since 1989, when a Muslim separatist revolt against Indian rule erupted.
   India wants Pakistan to do more to stop militants slipping across the ceasefire line into Indian Kashmir. Pakistan says Indian forces should stop rights abuses in the region.
   Despite their fundamental differences over Kashmir, a ceasefire has held there since late 2003 and the two sides have launched a so-called composite dialogue, on a whole range of issues including Kashmir.
   While little progress has been made towards a resolution of Kashmir, the two sides have reached agreement in several other areas including the restoration of diplomatic, sports and transport links, as well as on some trade and prisoner exchanges.

Nearly 1,900 attacks have been reported since an Islamic insurgency erupted 21 months ago in Thailand’s Muslim-majority south, the military said Sunday, as two more police officers were killed in a bombing.
   In a rare public report on the violence that broke out in January 2004, the southern army commander told reporters that authorities have documented 1,884 cases of arson, shootings, bombings and other violence linked to the unrest.
   ‘Narathiwat province has the most cases, at 912. Yala and Pattani come after with 511 and 461 cases respectively,’ lieutenant general Kwanchart Klaharn told a news conference.
   He did not have details on the occasional attacks outside those three provinces along the Malaysian border, which have suffered the worst of the unrest.
   Much of the violence has taken the form of drive-by shootings, arson attacks and small bombings.
   Kwanchart also said more arrests had been made in the September 21 beating deaths of two marines held hostage for 18 hours in a Narathiwat village, where 2,000 villagers had stopped security forces from rescuing them.
   Fifteen suspects were in police custody, he said, and a total of 34 arrest warrants have been issued over the killings that shocked the nation.

Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest sites, will mark the upcoming Muslim fasting month of Ramadan under a new king, but with the fight against terrorism still high on the agenda.
   King Abdullah has indicated, since ascending the throne of the oil-rich kingdom on August 1 that there will be no let-up in the battle against suspected al-Qaeda militants who launched a spate of shootings and bombings in May 2003.
   Ramadan, during which Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, will begin this week upon the sighting of the crescent moon, with Saudi Arabia preparing to receive up to two million pilgrims to the holy places in Mecca and Medina.
   But authorities have warned that charitable donations will be closely monitored during the holy month to prevents funds falling into the hands of extremists.
   Donations to the needy for iftar (fast-breaking) meals may only be made through ‘licensed charities,’ Islamic affairs ministry undersecretary Tewfik al-Sedeiri told the Saudi-owned daily Asharq Al-Awsat.
   The regulation of meal vouchers and other donations—which Sedeiri said had been in force for three years—is a far cry from past practices when they escaped government control, drawing US accusations that some of the money was channelled to extremist groups.
   Donations during the month of Ramadan reach some 400 million dollars on average, according to a spokesman for the semi-official Islamic Relief Agency.
   In Kuwait too, the government keeps tabs on Islamist-controlled charities—which step up fund-raising during Ramadan—in line with strict monitoring measures applied since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
   This year, charities are allowed to accept donations in mosques and community centres through stamped coupons and under government supervision. Cash donations have been totally banned.
   But government controls notwithstanding, charity remains a dominant theme of the Muslim fasting month throughout the region, where organisations, corporations and the wealthy vie in funding fast-breaking meals for the needy.
   The United Arab Emirates Red Crescent will offer such meals not just at home but also in 45 countries at a cost of five million dirhams (1.36 million dollars), the local press reported. It will also sponsor iftar banquets in Iraq and the Palestinian territories at a cost of eight million dirhams (2.2 million dollars).
   But in Qatar, authorities are preparing to clamp down on people they believe ‘take advantage’ of the spirit of charity that marks the holy month to engage in organised begging.
   ‘There are some who exploit the compassion that prevails in Ramadan in an illegal way,’ an interior ministry source said.
   The fasting during daylight hours most often ends with lavish banquets for the well-off in the oil-rich Gulf, where ‘Ramadan tents’ spring up everywhere.
   For those of limited means, Ramadan, with its tradition of elaborate meals and new clothes for the feast that follows, can be a strain on the family budget, especially in the Gulf’s impoverished neighbour, Yemen.
   ‘Our budget increases fourfold in Ramadan due to more spending on food and price rises that accompany the increase in demand,’ said Lutfiya, a Yemeni housewife.
   Throughout the region, day turns into night and night into day as residents—helped by shortened working hours—gather for endless evening reunions, chatting, eating, and in Yemen’s case at least, chewing qat, a narcotic shrub.
   Qatar’s favourite Ramadan pastime though is the hubble-bubble pipe, which has become as popular with women as with men in the tiny gas-rich emirate.

Israel on Sunday suspended an offensive against militants in the Gaza Strip, including targeted killings, to give the Palestinian leader, Mahmud Abbas, time for his own crackdown before talks with the president, George W Bush.
   A close aide to the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said a campaign of attacks last month, in which four hardline Islamists were killed in an air strikes on their vehicles, had taught Palestinians the ‘new rules of the game’ since the pullout of Israeli soldiers from the territory three weeks ago.
   The declaration was welcomed by the Palestinian Authority which said it would increase the chance for progress in the peace process.

Malaysia’s former premier Mahathir Mohamad said Sunday the bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali were not helping what he called the Muslim cause.
   ‘People will perceive Muslims as being very bad people but that is not Islam at all,’ Mahathir told reporters at the World Islamic Economic Forum here.
   ‘We are against such wild attacks. There is no reason at all for doing that, and I think (the attackers) are not helping the cause,’ he said.
   At least 26 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in Saturday’s attacks, which Indonesia’s top counter-terrorism official said bore the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiyah militants linked to al-Qaeda.
   But Mahathir, who is well known for his anti-Western rhetoric and who ruled Malaysia for 22 years until his retirement two years ago, suggested that a backlash against Muslims would serve little purpose.
   ‘If there is a backlash, what does it achieve? I have repeatedly said that people don’t blow themselves up for no reason. You must find the reason and then you deal with the reason,’ he said.

Indian opposition leader LK Advani has demanded an enquiry into allegations that foreign money was used to bribe officials to influence Indian politics.
   Advani’s demand follows claims that the KGB infiltrated Indira Gandhi’s government in the 1970s.
   A former KBG official says in a new book that the Soviet intelligence agency had an extensive network of contacts in the government.
   India’s governing Congress party has rubbished the allegations in the book.
   Excerpts of the new book, The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World, were widely published in the Indian press.
   Advani, leader of India’s main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, told reporters in Delhi that the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, should launch an investigation into the allegations.
   He said he had written a letter to Singh demanding an investigation.
   Advani said that the allegations in the book were the biggest scandal to hit India after the country’s independence.
   Gandhi led three Congress governments before being assassinated.

Heavily armed soldiers patrolled the deserted streets of the curfew-bound Tura on Sunday, preventing people from going to church, days after the police shot dead 10 students during a protest.
   Angry residents of the remote northeast town protested by placing boulders, logs and trees on roads to disrupt movement of vehicles carrying the police and soldiers and damaged several government vehicles.
   ‘It was an act of suppression of fundamental rights of the people. People have taken it as an insult, which they are not going to tolerate and not keep quiet,’ Purno Agitok Sangma, a local member of parliament, said.
   The police said the situation was still tense and feared hundreds of people will again come out on the streets and attack government property if the curfew is lifted.

US forces, backed by fighter aircraft and helicopter gunships, killed eight guerrillas in a sweep along Iraq’s border with Syria border as guerrillas struck the capital with bombs and mortar fire Sunday.
   A force of 1,000 US soldiers launched Operation ‘Iron Fist’ in and around the village of Sadah in the restive Euphrates Valley on Saturday, the latest offensive aimed at rooting out al-Qaeda-linked guerrillas in the border region.
   ‘Coalition Forces, including helicopters from 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, engaged and killed eight armed terrorists in fighting early in the day October 1,’ according to a US military statement.
   In one engagement, a combat helicopter destroyed a vehicle after its driver fired on a marine position with a rocket-propelled grenade. The rebel was killed.
   The offensive is ‘intended to deny al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorists the ability to operate freely in the Euphrates River Valley and to prevent the terrorists from influencing the local population through murder and intimidation,’ the military said.
   In mid-September, US and Iraqi forces mounted a large-scale operation to recapture the town of Tal Afar, in north-western Iraq, which had fallen under the sway of guerrillas.
   The United States has long accused Syria of not doing enough to stop foreign fighters crossing into Iraq.
   In Baghdad, one civilian was killed and one wounded Sunday when four mortar shells fell around the Iraqi interior ministry, a ministry official said.
   A police captain was also killed by unidentified gunmen in an attack in the west of the city, he added.
   Three bomb explosions were reported elsewhere in Baghdad, including one involving a remote-controlled booby-trapped car which blew up bomb disposal experts approached it. There were no injuries.
   There are fears of an upsurge in violence by Sunni-led insurgents with just two weeks to go before Iraqis vote on a post-Saddam Hussein constitution that has deeply divided the country’s ethnic communities.
   There was no news on the fate of the brother of Iraqi interior minister Bayan Baqer Sulagh who was kidnapped Saturday in the capital.
   Abdul Jabar Sulagh was abducted by armed men who blocked his car and forced him into their vehicle, a ministry official said.
   Meanwhile, British army morale and recruitment are suffering because troops are seen as ‘guilty by association’ with prime minister Tony’s Blair’s decision to invade Iraq, Britain’s top soldier told the Sunday Times newspaper.
   General Sir Michael Walker, chief of the defence of staff, also said Britain and the United States will have to make do with a less-than-perfect outcome from the US-led war.

Iran’s president has denied reports he threatened to withhold oil sales if Tehran was referred to the UN Security Council over its nuclear activities.
   The UN nuclear watchdog agency passed a resolution a week ago paving the way for Iran to be reported to the council.
   President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he did not give an interview to a Dubai newspaper which reported him as issuing the warning on oil sales.
   However, the Khaleej Times newspaper is standing by its freelance reporter.
   The editor, Prem Chandran, said the reporter has now clarified that on several occasions when she spoke to the president she presented herself as a reporter with the US-based Arab News, and not as a Khaleej Times reporter.
   In her report, journalist Nihal Kamel quoted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying: ‘We will respond by many ways, for example by holding back on oil sales.’
   Western powers are concerned that Iran’s uranium enrichment programme could be used to build weapons.
   Iran insists its nuclear programme is purely peaceful, and designed to meet its energy needs.
   The International Atomic Energy Agency approved a resolution last Saturday paving the way for referral to the Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
   The resolution was submitted by Britain, France and Germany. Twelve members of the agency’s board abstained.
   Tehran responded with defiance, reaffirming plans to resume uranium enrichment and threatening to prevent snap inspections of its facilities by nuclear inspectors.
   Tehran recently restarted work on the early stages of uranium enrichment. Such work had been suspended since November 2004 while talks were held with the UK, France and Germany about its long-term nuclear plans.
   Iran hid a uranium enrichment programme for 18 years until its activities were exposed in 2002.

Voters in the German city of Dresden were casting the last ballots in the inconclusive national election Sunday in what could offer a breakthrough in a bitter power struggle over who will be the next chancellor.
   Some 220,000 registered voters in Dresden’s district 1 will decide the final make-up of the Bundestag lower house of parliament, with three seats at stake.
   Analysts said it was nearly impossible that the vote would reverse the conservative majority.
   However the election, which was postponed for two weeks due to the death of a neo-Nazi candidate, could offer either Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder or conservative opposition leader Angela Merkel a key boost in their rival bids to become Germany’s next leader.
   Merkel’s Christian Democrats claimed just three seats more in the Bundestag in the general election two weeks ago than Schroeder’s Social Democrats, far short of a ruling majority.
   The photo-finish left both Merkel and Schroeder claiming a mandate to lead the next government, which is now expected to be a so-called ‘grand coalition’ grouping the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats .

The European Union launched a last-ditch bid Sunday to break a deadlock threatening landmark negotiations with Turkey, but admitted ‘considerable difficulties’ remained at emergency talks on the standoff.
   The 11th-hour ministerial talks Sunday evening—hours before the scheduled negotiations with Ankara Monday—focus on Austrian demands that the EU consider something less than full membership for the vast mainly Muslim state.
   ‘We’re committed to doing this. Of course we’re hopeful. But there is one delegation with considerable difficulties and we have to try to overcome them,’ said a British spokesman ahead of the start of the talks.
   The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, whose country has long been a staunch supporter of Ankara’s EU hopes, underscored the geopolitical significance of offering Turkey membership of the rich European club.
   ‘We’re concerned about this theological-political divide, which could open up even further down the boundary between so-called Christian-heritage states and those of Islamic heritage,’ he told the BBC.
   ‘We need to see Turkey in the European Union and not pushed the other way.’
   EU leaders agreed at a summit last December to start membership talks with Turkey—which has been knocking on the EU’s door for over four decades—on October 3.
   But tensions flared again in July when Ankara, while signing an updated customs accord with the enlarged EU including Cyprus, issued a declaration reiterating its refusal to recognise the Nicosia government.
   A dispute over how to respond to that has been resolved, but a row remains over the negotiating framework—the guiding procedures and principles for the accession talks.
   It is unclear exactly what change of wording will satisfy Austria. The current draft—accepted by all 24 other EU states—says that EU entry is the main aim of the talks. Vienna would like that replaced, or at least complemented, by an offer of a lesser ‘privileged partnership’.
   Turkish leaders, whose reputation for negotiating brinkmanship is well known, have warned they may yet not turn up in Luxembourg on Monday.

The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, has insisted his revolution cannot be exported—a concern voiced by Washington—and warned the United States that if it kills him, unrest would rock Venezuela and countries across Latin America.
   ‘Ours is a peaceful and democratic revolution, but it is a revolution. We have no ideas about exporting it. Revolutions are not for export; each country is unique,’ Chavez said at the first meeting of the South American Community of Nations here late Friday.
   With his coffers flush with oil earnings, Chavez offered to invest five billion dollars in a South American Development Bank.
   ‘What we do want is debate about the economic model, the social model,’ said Chavez, an elected leftist and close ally of the communist Cuban president, Fidel Castro.
   ‘The United States’ threats against us are a serious thing. If they wipe me out, there could be unrest not only in Venezuela but also in other countries across the Americas,’ warned Chavez.
   ‘It is a (US) government that harbours terrorists, I am making that charge. It has plans to attack Venezuela and assault Venezuela directly,’ Chavez said.
   Chavez, whose country is a key US oil supplier, was outraged earlier in the week when a US judge in El Paso, Texas ruled that an anti-Castro militant wanted by Venezuela for bombing a Cuban airliner cannot be deported to Cuba or Venezuela because that might violate the provisions of an international convention banning torture. US Judge William Abbott, however, left open the possibility that Luis Posada Carriles could be deported to other countries, said a spokeswoman for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
   Posada Carriles has denied he was the mastermind behind the 1976 bombing of a Venezuelan jet that claimed 73 lives.
   He was tried once in Venezuela and acquitted for the airliner bombing. But he fled prison in 1985 as a high court considered whether to confirm the acquittal.
   In a 1998 New York Times interview, Posada Carriles admitted he had plotted bombings of two Havana hotels in 1997, one of which killed an Italian tourist. He later retracted his statement.
   Lawyers for Pasada Carriles argued that he would be tortured if he was deported to Venezuela.
   The Cuban-born Venezuelan national faces immigration charges after he entered the United States illegally via Mexico last March.
   Chavez, in Brasilia, lashed out at Washington for not extraditing Posada Carriles, the man he calls ‘the bin Laden of Latin America.’
   In Caracas, vice-president Jose Vicente Rangel warned Friday ‘there will be a decision made soon about continuing relations’ with the United States.
   ‘I think that in the United States every effort is being made to set out a major provocation of Venezuela, to that we respond without thinking carefully, but they are not going to pull it off,’ Rangel told reporters.

The astronomers who claim to have discovered the 10th planet in the solar system have another intriguing announcement: It has a moon.
   While observing the new, so-called planet from Hawaii last month, a team of astronomers led by Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology spotted a faint object trailing next to it. Because it was moving, astronomers ruled it was a moon and not a background star, which is stationary.
   The moon discovery is important because it can help scientists determine the new planet's mass. In July, Brown announced the discovery of an icy, rocky object larger than Pluto in the Kuiper Belt, a disc of icy bodies beyond Neptune. Brown labelled the object a planet and nicknamed it Xena after the lead character in the former TV series 'Xena: Warrior Princess.' The moon was nicknamed Gabrielle, after Xena's faithful travelling sidekick.
   By determining the moon's distance and orbit around Xena, scientists can calculate how heavy Xena is. For example, the faster a moon goes around a planet, the more massive a planet is.
   But the discovery of the moon is not likely to quell debate about what exactly makes a planet. The problem is there is no official definition for a planet and setting standards like size limits potentially invites other objects to take the 'planet' label. Possessing a moon is not a criterion of planet hood since Mercury and Venus are moonless planets. Brown said he expected to find a moon orbiting Xena because many Kuiper Belt objects are paired with moons.
   The newly discovered moon is about 155 miles wide and 60 times fainter than Xena, the farthest-known object in the solar system. It is currently 9 billion miles away from the sun, or about three times Pluto's current distance from the sun.
   Scientists believe Xena's moon was formed when Kuiper Belt objects collided with one another. The Earth's moon formed in a similar way when Earth crashed into an object the size of Mars.
   The moon was first spotted by a 10-meter telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii on Sept. 10. Scientists expect to learn more about the moon's composition during further observations with the Hubble Space Telescope in November.

El Salvador’s largest volcano, dormant for more than a century, shook the ground as it woke up, hurling out hot lava rocks, killing at least two people and forcing more than 2,000 to flee.
   The Santa Ana or Ilamatepec volcano, located 66 kilometres (41 miles) west of the capital, rumbled and belched thick plumes of smoke that reached more than 15 kilometres (nine miles) into the sky just after 8:30am (1430 GMT) Saturday.
   Military emergency sirens blasted, calling for an immediate area evacuation of the hamlets in the coffee growing area, and soon after the volcano began hurling glowing lava and ash from its crater.
   The volcano ‘has begun to expel magma on the side of the town of San Blas, while the ash is being carried by a south-southwesterly wind,’ the University of El Salvador vulcanologist Francisco Barahona said.
   Officials with the National Emergency Committee said that by 1:00pm (1900 GMT), 2,250 people had been evacuated from the danger zone.
   Hot lava rocks belched out by the volcano ranged from the size of a football to the size of a car, an AFP journalist on the scene reported.
   At least seven people were injured by red hot lava rocks spewed into the air by the eruption, the national police said.
   Two people were killed when 200 residents were evacuated from the hamlet of Palo Campana, located just two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the crater, said Interior Minister Rene Figueroa.
   Residents fled aboard trucks when a flood of boiling water from an underground lake rushed down from the crater from three directions.

Promises of wide-ranging reforms after the fall of former president Slobodan Milosevic have failed to fully materialise in Serbia, which is still suffering from his years of mismanagement and corruption. A decade of isolation and sanctions during the era of Milosevic-who is being tried for genocide and crimes against humanity at the UN tribunal in the Hague-ruined Serbia's economy and impoverished its citizens.
   Average monthly wages were as low as 50 euros (60 dollars) in October 2000 when people took to the streets and eventually forced Milosevic to step down.
   The average monthly salary has since risen to about 200 euros, while per capita gross domestic product has increased to 1,244 euros from 830 euros during Milosevic's reign.

Liquor kills 22
in Guwahati
At least 22 people died and nearly two hundred others were hospitalised in northeast India after drinking contaminated bootleg liquor at the weekend, the Assam state health minister said Sunday. The liquor was sold by illegal shops in Tezpur, 180 kilometres north of Assam’s main city of Guwahati, on Friday and 13 people died Saturday after drinking the molasses-based brew, said Bhumi Dhar Barman, the state health minister. He said the toll rose overnight and more people became ill. ‘Nine people have died overnight and 200 are now in hospitals,’ Barman said. — AFP

Four killed in raids on Pakistani posts
Suspected al-Qaeda-linked militants attacked two Pakistani military check- points near the Afghan border on Sunday and two soldiers and two gunmen were killed, security officials said. Pakistan has been trying to clear militants from its lawless tribal areas on the border since early last year. Hundreds of militants and Pakistani soldiers have been killed. The latest round of clashes began last week. In the first attack on Sunday, militants firing rockets launched a pre-dawn raid on a paramilitary check-post near the town of Miranshah in the troubled North Waziristan tribal region, 400 km southwest of the capital, Islamabad.
— Reuters

13 killed in Bangalore bus accident
At least 13 passengers were killed and 23 injured Sunday when a driver lost control of a bus and crashed into a tree in southern India, the police said. The accident occurred near Magadi on the outskirts of the Karanataka state capital of Bangalore, a police spokesman said. Eleven men and two women were killed in the crash. The injured have been rushed to nearby hospitals.
— AFP

One dead as typhoon lashes Taiwan
Typhoon Longwang was swirling towards southeast China after pounding Taiwan on Sunday, leaving one dead, one missing and 46 injured while disrupting flights and downing power lines. The typhoon made landfall in the east of the island early Sunday and left in the afternoon, the Central Weather Bureau said. A 60-year-old man and his wife were hit by an iron bar which smashed into their home in the eastern town of Chian, said the National Fire Agency which is coordinating rescue operations.
— AFP

Two killed in Sri Lanka
Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels have shot dead two men in Sri Lanka’s embattled eastern province while the prime minister took his election campaign to the troubled region, officials said. Gunmen believed to be from the LTTE shot dead two construction workers employed at a Hindu temple at Valachchenai in the district of Batticaloa on Friday night, military officials said on Sunday. They said the motive for the attack was not immediately clear, but security forces lodged a complaint with the Norwegian-led truce monitors that the killings were a breach of a truce that has been in place since February 2002.
— AFP

Jordan, Iraq sign border accord
Jordan and Iraq signed an accord to strengthen border security in the fight against ‘terrorism and organized crime,’ officials said. The agreement came following a meeting in Amman between the Iraqi interior minister, Bayan Bagher Solagh, and his Jordanian counterpart, Auni Yervas. ‘We have signed an accord aimed at fighting terrorism, organised crime, money-laundering and border infiltrations,’ Yervas said during a press conference. Solagh added that ‘terrorism has no border, which is why we must strengthen cooperation between Islamic and Arab states.’ Relations between Jordan and Iraq have been strained lately, with Baghdad accusing Jordanian militants of waging insurgent war on Iraqi territory, and Jordan’s largely Sunni population fearful that Iraq’s majority Shiites will lead to greater Iranian influence in the Arab world.
— AFP

E German police spied on Pope Benedict XVI
The East German secret police spied on the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI for 15 years, targeting him as one of the Vatican’s fiercest opponents of communism, according to a report published Sunday. From April 1974 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the feared Ministry for State Security kept close tabs on the then theology professor Joseph Ratzinger, according to documents from the so-called Stasi archives printed in the weekly Bild am Sonntag. ‘Ratzinger is seen at the Vatican as one of the staunchest opponents of communism,’ a Stasi spy said.
— AFP

Rare eclipse to appear over
Europe, Africa
A rare and spectacular type of eclipse will dim the morning sky across a strip of south-western Europe and eight African countries Monday. During the event, called an annular eclipse, the moon will mask the sun like a black plate, leaving a bright, fiery rim. The moon will be too small to blot out the sun completely, as in a total eclipse, because its elliptical orbit has taken it too far from the earth. However, scientists say the daylight will fade and temperatures will drop slightly as the eclipse travels along a narrow band girdling almost half the planet. The rim of fire that appears around the moon glows brighter than the corona which is seen during a total eclipse.
— AP

LA fire seen fully contained by today
Fire-fighters have the upper hand on a wildfire on the outskirts of Los Angeles that has burned 24,000 acres and they expect to have it fully contained by Monday evening, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Fire Department said on Saturday. ‘It looks like we’re at about 40 per cent containment,’ said Ron Haralson, an inspector with the department. ‘We’re looking at having it 100 per cent contained by Monday, 6:00pm.’ The so-called Topanga fire in hilly terrain in the northwest part of the county started on Wednesday and spread quickly because of strong and hot wind.
— Reuters

OJ Simpson makes public appearance
Testing the waters of his tarnished celebrity a decade after his acquittal on murder charges, OJ Simpson appeared at a horror-themed comic book convention on Friday night to sign autographs, but few beside the media seemed to care. Simpson’s rare public outing in Los Angeles at the annual NecroComicon show drew little interest from those attending the event, with no more than a dozen people traipsing up a rear stairwell into a small room to glimpse the former football star and actor.
— Reuters